My copy of Leopard arrived this morning and, of course, I hurried to install it to take a peek around.
The system I decided I would install on first is my first generation Black MacBook with the 2.0 GHz Core Due processor. This is the computer I user for everything except for development (my QuickSilver G4/933 is my development machine). So, I figured I would install the MacBook first as that would allow me to be completely immersed in Leopard right off the bat.
Of course, the first step was to do a complete backup of the computer (you do backup before making major changes to your computer, right?). So, I launched my copy of the handy SuperDuper! and connected to a external hard drive that I use for backups. About half-an-hour later, I had a complete backup of the MacBook and I was ready to install Leopard. (I should probably point out that, as of this writing, SuperDuper! is not completely compatible with Leopard. The author however promises a quick update to make it completely compatible. This incompatibility doesn't affect my backup as SuperDuper! was running under Tiger when the backup was made. If the worst happens and I need to restore, I can simply boot off the external drive, which has Tiger on it, and do a restore.)
Once the backup was done, I went to open the box that FedEx delivered earlier this morning.
The first thing that struck me was that the shipping box was obviously custom-made specifically to hold the Leopard box. That doesn't mean that it was designed specifically for Leopard, but that it was designed to hold the type of box that Leopard comes in. It just continues the nice touches that Apple provides.
The Leopard box itself is very similar to the iLife '08 box. The box itself is wrapped in a sleeve. Pull the box out and it opens to reveal the DVD itself. On the left side is a box-in-a-box that contains the Leopard "manual" and the customary Apple logo stickers.
All in all, the packaging is typical Apple with a lot of attention to detail.
I popped the DVD into the MacBook and after a few moments the DVD window appeared on the screen. I double-clicked the "Install Mac OS X" icon and the computer restarted and booted from the DVD.
The boot process took about 3 minutes (typical for booting from a DVD). Once the boot-process was done, the installer automatically started. The welcome screen has a welcome graphic and a "Continue" and "More Information" button. Clicking the "More Information" button replaces the welcome graphic with the read me text from the DVD.
The installer works very much like the Tiger installer. I was given the option as to the type of installation I wanted to perform (erase the hard drive first, do an upgrade install or an archive and install). I chose the Erase and Install option so the hard drive would be wiped clean first. When I was given the opportunity to customize the installation, I chose to not install the printer drivers or the additional languages (saving close to a GB in space).
I clicked the "Install" button and the installation proceeded. As with the Tiger installer, the Leopard installer spent about 15 minutes checking the install DVD for "consistency". I would assume that it's checking the DVD for errors to make sure that the install is not interrupted by a disc error. I think this is a good thing so that you aren't left with an unusable installation.
During the installation I already started to notice the changes in the look of the OS itself (the new look for windows, the translucent menubar, etc). It's that obvious.
The install took about 45 minutes (including the DVD check). Once it was complete, the installer window displayed a large green check mark with text that indicated that the installation succeeded. I was reminded by how Apple has obviously spent some time making even the Installation process as beautiful as possible. Much better than that Redmond bunch.
The computer restarted and the OS loaded. As with every other version of Mac OS X, after the first restart the Welcome movie played. Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, this welcome movie was full-screen and much longer than previous versions with more languages represented. With the camera swooshing around in space, the movie looked like something out of Star Trek. Pretty cool movie.
After the movie was done and the welcome window appeared (the window asking for my country), I let the computer just sit there for a moment as I wrote down some notes. I was surprised when a male voice began speaking about VoiceOver and gave instructions on how to use the feature. That was a very nice touch by Apple.
I proceeded through the setup assistant. I chose not to use the Migration Assistant during the setup process (electing to do that manually later). I also noted that there is a big emphasis on .Mac during the setup assistant. Not an issue, just found it interesting.
All in all, the Leopard installation is just as easy as you would expect from Apple. It really was as pleasant an experience as you could expect from an installation process.
I'll detail more experiences, including my run-in with the Migration Assistant, in later posts. Stay tuned...
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